"So she placed the brandy on the sill outside the window. The Kafirs were standing about in groups, looking very fierce, but they saw the elephant-gun and did nothing. But as she barred the shutter again, she heard them rush up and snatch the bottles.
"Watching through the keyhole of the door, she saw them troop off to the huts, shouting and capering and waving the bottles in the air. They came to the door no more that day, but she heard them howling in the kraal as the brandy began to inflame them.
"When it got dark she sat down with her face to the door, her child in her arms. The howling of the Kafirs was wilder than ever, and shrieks of women mingled with the uproar. The Vrouw Coetzee trembled there in the dark as she remembered stories of the Kafir wars, and how the Kafirs had treated the white women and children they caught on the farms.
"Late in the night the Kafirs came back and commenced to hammer on the door again.
"'Give us more brandy,' they shouted.
"'I have no more,' she said. 'I have given you all.'
"'You lie!' they screamed. 'If you do not give us more we will come and kill you and tear your baby to pieces.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee began to tremble, and, putting down the child, took the big gun in her hands.
"'That is you, Kleinbooi,' she cried out, recognizing the voice of one of the Kafirs. 'Why do you behave like this? What will the baas say when he comes back?'
"'We do not care for the baas,' they replied. 'If you do not give us the brandy we will break in your door.'
"'I have no more,' she said again, and straightway the
Kafirs commenced to hammer at the door.
"The Vrouw Coetzee raised the gun to her shoulder and pointed it at the door. Her arms were trembling so that she could not keep it steady; so, going close up to the door, she rested the muzzle on the iron bar. Then she pulled the trigger.
"The gun went off with a roar and filled the room with a stifling smoke. The baby began to cry, but she paid it no attention till the gun was loaded again. Then, as she snatched up her child and soothed it, she heard wailing and screaming from outside, where the heavy bullet had done its work.
"The Kafirs left her at peace for about an hour, and the noise of the wounded sank to a sobbing. At last a voice hailed her again.
"'We will kill you now,' it said. 'You have shot two men,' and she was assailed with a string of horrid names such as only a Kafir can think of.
"'Where are you?' she called, terrified.
"'Here,' came the reply, and a little stone fell down the chimney.
"'I will shoot!' she screamed, taking up the gun; but the
Kafir on the roof answered with only a laugh.
"'It will do no good,' he replied. 'We shall kill you, burn you in a fire slowly, scald you with boiling water, cut you in little pieces,' and he went on to threaten the lone woman with the most fiendish and ghastly outrages, such as I dare not even give a name to.
"The low devilish voice on the roof went on. 'And your baby, vile thing! You shall see it writhe in the flames, and hear it cry to you, and watch the blood spout from its skin. You shall see the dogs tearing it, while you lie in anguish, powerless to aid it. Yes, we will kill the child first, and slowly—slowly! It shall cry a long time before it shall die at last.'
"Then the Vrouw Coetzee, calling aloud on God, pointed the gun and fired through the roof. There was a laugh again, and before the smoke cleared a big Kafir dropped down the wide chimney and rushed at her.
"Her gun was empty, but the Vrouw Coetzee was the worthy wife of a good Boer, and she raised the heavy weapon and struck him down. He rolled, face upward, on the floor, and as he lay she struck him again. He kicked once or twice with his legs and clutched with his hands; and then he lay still and died.
"It was their plan, you see, that she should fire off her gun and then be taken before she had time to recharge it.
"'Have you got the woman, Martinus?' called a Kafir from outside.
"'No,' cried the Vrouw Coetzee; Martinus has not got the woman, for I have killed him. Who comes next?'
"There was a while of silence then, till she heard them moving about again and talking among themselves. Not daring to think what they would do next, she stood hearkening, with the great gun on her arm. At length came a sound that froze the blood in her body. She heard the sheet-iron on the roof grate as it was dragged off. Then she dropped the gun at her feet and knew that her time was come.
"I cannot tell you in so many words what she did in the next minutes, for my tongue refuses the tale. But the Kafirs did not get into the house. By this time the news of their doings was gone abroad, and as the roof was being taken off the house, some Burghers arrived with guns, and with them my husband. Of course they shot most of the Kafirs that they could find, and then, being unable to get any answer to their shouts, they broke in the door of the house and entered.
"My husband used to weep as he told of what they found. The Vrouw Coetzee was sitting in a chair, smiling with her eyes closed, and her baby was lying in the crutch of her left arm. Her right hand was on his little soft throat—his face blue and swollen, and his little arms stretched out with tight closed fists. He was quite dead, but warm yet, for he had missed life by but a few minutes.
"No, the Vrouw Coetzee was not dead. She died a year after; but all that while she went witless, always smiling and seeming to look for something.
"So you see that, after all, a Kafir is—Katje, what are you crying about?"
PIET NAUDE'S TREK
On Sunday afternoons the Vrouw Grobelaar's household gave itself up, unwillingly enough, to religious exercises. The girls retired to their rooms in company with the works of certain well-meaning but inexpressibly dreary authors, and it is to be inferred they read them with profit. The children sat around the big room with Bibles, their task being to learn by heart one of the eight-verse articulations of the 119th Psalm, while the old lady meditated in her armchair and maintained discipline. Those were stern times for the young students: to fidget in one's seat was to court calamity; even to scratch oneself was a risky experiment. David got little credit as a bard in that assembly.
But the work once done, the stumbling recitation dared and achieved, there were compensations, for the Vrouw Grobelaar was then approachable for a story. To be sure, the Sunday afternoon stories were known to all the children almost by heart, but what good tale will not bear repetition? The history of Piet Naude's Trek was an evergreen favorite, and bore a weighty moral.
The old lady began this story in the only possible way. "Once upon a time, long before the Boers came to the Transvaal, there lived a man named Piet Naude. He was a tall, strong Burgher, with a long beard that swept down to his waist, and a moustache like bright gold that drooped lower than his chin. His eye was so clear that he could see the legs of a galloping buck a mile away; his hand was so sure that he never wasted a bullet; and his heart was so good and true that all the Burghers loved him and followed him in whatever he did.
"Well, when the English came to the Burghers and wanted them to pay taxes for their farms that they had won in battle from the Kafirs, all the men in Piet Naude's country were very angry and said, 'Let us take our guns and shoot the English into the sea, so that the land will be clear of them.' Everybody was willing, and but for Piet Naude there would have been a great and bloody war, and all the English would have been killed.
"But Piet Naude said, 'Brothers, have patience. When we fought the Kafirs we beat them, but many of us were killed also. If we fight the English, many more will be killed, and we are not too many now. But I will tell you what we will do. We will not pay this tax. We will inspan our oxen and load up our wagons, and we will take our sheep and our cattle and our horses, and trek to the north until we find a place where we can live in peace; and thus we shall have